Wednesday, June 03, 2015

The Tea Party is a corporate scam, but members won’t care

No surprise here. A study funded by the National Cancer
Institute of the National Institute of Health provides conclusive evidence that
the founding of the Tea Party was not a grassroots effort by tax protestors and
small government conservatives, but an organization formed and funded by groups
with ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers.

Liberals and Progressives have long asserted that the Tea
Party was an AstroTurf movement created to push a corporate-friendly agenda,
and now we know that is the case. And the effort has been extremely successful.
Since its inception in 2002, the Tea Party has successfully pushed Republican
candidates farther and farther to the right, confused the public on climate
change, muscled its way into state legislatures to promote its agenda, and all
but abolished bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.

You might think that rank and file members of the Tea Party
would be a bit miffed to learn they belonged to an organization created by
billionaires to advance a corporate agenda, but I doubt that will be the case.
First of all, if you are a member of the Tea Party, you’re not too bright to
begin with and are probably used to being taken advantage of by those smarter
than you. Second, you’ve convinced yourself that it doesn’t matter, because,
hey, maybe someday you’ll be a billionaire too. Or finally, you’ve been
brainwashed into believing that what’s good for RJ Reynolds and the Koch
brothers is good for America.

Interestingly, the Tea Party would probably not have grown
into the political powerhouse it is today if anyone other than Obama was President.
Because he’s black, smart and the boss of everybody, he has become an icon
representing everything Tea Partier’s despise about America in 2015, and he has
served to bring racist whites together in common cause and shared hatred.

Money can’t buy love, but it can buy hundreds of thousands
of gullible citizens willing to crusade for America’s beleaguered billionaires.